As many of you know, two of the Gospels contain explicit Christmas stories of Jesus’ birth (Matthew and Luke) and two that don’t (Mark and John).
I want to begin today with one of the two Gospels that don’t refer specifically to Jesus’ birth, namely Mark.
But first some questions: (1) why do you think the story of Jesus’ birth is found in only 2 Gospels and not all four? (2) How important is the Christmas story to the Christian faith anyway?
Why do you think the Gospel of Mark omits the story of Jesus’ birth?
Here I think there are 2 correct answers:
- It is a gospel. So here we need to think about the meaning of the word gospel? What do you need to share about God and Jesus Christ for another person to come to faith? Do you need to include the story of Jesus’ birth? (You could, but you don’t necessarily need to.)
Who is its author? Here I think there are three correct answers:
(1) God, and specifically the Holy Spirit who has inspired all of Scripture as 2 Peter 1:21 reminds us, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
(2) Mark—how do you know this? The current titles we find for virtually all the books in the Bible were not necessarily original but were added only when the books of the Bible were gathered together into larger units: the four Gospels, the NT, the entire Bible. Prior to that the books of the New Testament didn’t have the same names that we associate with them today.
(3) Peter: Church tradition clearly tells us that the Apostle Peter was the sources of much of the material in this Gospel. In one sense, Mark was the actual author who wrote down the words of this Gospel with pen and ink, but it would seem that his friend and mentor, the Apostle Peter, shared much of this material with Mark. In many ways this is not a surprise, many of the books of the Bible were written with human scribes or secretaries to help them with the actual handwriting of a book. In 1 Peter 5:13, we can see how Peter refers to Mark as his son.” There is clearly a close connection between Peter and Mark, and the common understanding is that both were involved in the composition of this book of Mark even though this book doesn’t identify either one as the original authors of this book. If this is true, then it is not surprising that Peter focuses on things that he personally had witnessed during his time with Jesus—or at least things Jesus had specifically told him.
Look with me at Mark 1:1, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” What is this verse telling us? Is this verse even a proper sentence? Perhaps this opening verse is best taken as the original title of this book.
Here is another question, what does it mean, “the beginning” in verse 1? Is Mark 1:1 the title of the entire 16-chapter book, or only the first section of the book?
Now look with me at verses 2-8 of Mark. What lessons or insights do you see here in this section?
Lessons I see: Jesus is a promised figure (verse 2) and God has already prepared the way for His coming.
Without looking, does anyone happen to know the content of the last two verses of the OT—and here I am thinking of the order of the OT books in our standard English Bibles?
“5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal. 4:5-6).
Now the OT Elijah we read about in Kings and Chronicles would have lived hundreds of years before Malachi. Malachi is often dated about 460 BC in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and the return of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity. So, who is Malachi referring to here in these final verses of his book?
Malachi’s words may seem strange to us when he talks about this prophet turning the hears of fathers to their children and vice versa. How would you understand this? God is telling us how radically God will change peoples’ hearts and minds first through John the Baptist and then ultimately through Jesus Christ. Here is a question: how bothers you the most? Or irritates you the most? Or where do you experience the greatest tensions and difficulties in life?
Is it someone living on the opposite side of the world you have never met and probably never will meet in this present life? My sense is that for most of us, our greatest problems are with people in our own family or circles of acquaintances? I believe God is telling us that through John the Baptist and ultimately Jesus’ ministries will so change people that there will be a new harmony and unity even in our closest relationships with other people. I don’t think we can necessarily conclude that if you become a Christian your relationships with others will be magically healed, but I do believe God will give you a new love for others around you.
I believe we are also reminded of here in Mark 1:2-8 of how Jesus’ origin reminds us of God’s foresight and how God is working everything out according to His perfect and sovereign plan. Jesus’s life and ministry is clearly rooted in human history. That is at least part of the lesson why Mark’s Gospel begins as it does with this reminder of His connection to John the Baptist—and indeed all the Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ.
Throughout Scripture there is a need to focus on Jesus as both God and man
Athanasian Creed: “Now this is the true faith: that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is both God and man, equally.” Later on, it says, “completely God, completely man.”
Some passages focus more on Jesus’ humanity and others more on His deity. For example, the Book of Hebrew it teaches us both that Jesus was a human being just like any of us and “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin,” as Hebrews 4:15 tell us, and yet there are also many other passages that focus just as clearly on Jesus’ deity.
Most books include both Jesus’ true humanity and His true deity. When we turn to the Gospel of Mark, most of the focus is on Jesus’ humanity because that is what people saw with their physical eyes during His earthly life. But they were amazed at Jesus and tried to figure out who He really was, for example, see the response of Jesus’ own disciples in Mark 4:41 at one of the times when Jesus stilled a storm on the Sea of Galilee, “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Mark describes the process many of us go through when we are first learning about Jesus: who is this Jesus. The story of Mark’s Gospel is that people were trying to figure out who He really was.
Here is a trivia question, who is the only human being in Mark’s Gospel who correctly identifies Jesus as the Son of God. It is a Roman centurion at the time of Jesus death in Mark 15:39, “And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
Mark’s Gospel begins with a first-hand account of Jesus’ ministry (undoubtedly assisted by Peter) of what they saw and heard during Jesus’ earthly ministry. As is often the case with many of us as well, Jesus’ true identity emerges only slowly as we learn more and more about Him. But the lesson for us is that sooner or later, we need to realize He is God in human flesh.